Questions?

What is Open Access?

Open access (OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly research. It is most commonly applied to scholarly journal articles, but it is also increasingly being provided to theses, scholarly monographs and book chapters.

At Duke, one of the signature themes of our mission is putting knowledge in the service of society. This means making the fruits of Duke research available as broadly as possible — not just to researchers at places like Duke that have subscription access to scholarly literature via their libraries but to anyone who might benefit from the scholarship being done here.

Duke University supports open access through a number of initiatives and encourages Duke scholars to work toward making their research openly accessible.

Support for Open Access at Duke University

Open Access Policy for Faculty Scholarship

In March 2010, the Duke University Academic Counciladopted an open access policy that applies to all Duke faculty members and, unless individual authors choose to opt-out, provides Duke a license to make scholarly articles authored by Duke faculty freely available via a Duke University Libraries repository known as DukeSpace. The text of the policy is found in Appendix P of the Faculty Handbook. If your publisher requests a formal letter waiving the faculty open access policy (i.e., asking you to opt out), please send an email to open-access@duke.edu that includes the name of the publisher and the citation of the article.

Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE) Fund

Open-access journals make their articles available freely to anyone, without subscription costs, while providing the same peer review and other services common to all scholarly journals. To cover the costs of these services, some OA journals charge fees to authors instead, once their work has been selected for publication.